Rick Perry Calls Social Security and Medicare “Ponzi Schemes”

Q: In Fed Up!, you criticize the progressive era and the changes it produced: the 16th and 17th Amendments, Social Security, Medicare, and so on. I understand being against these things in principle—of longing for a world in which they never existed. But now that they’re part of the fabric of our society, do you think we should actually do away with them?

And no, that wasn’t a slip of the tongue, because he said it again, shortly after.

We have to be courageous as a country and stand up and admit that we have a Social Security program that is bankrupt, that is a Ponzi scheme, that Medicare and Medicaid collective had $106 trillion worth of liability that is unfunded, and that we need to deal with it and quit passing it on to the next Congress and the next generation.

Ponzi schemes are illegal, obviously.

The Secessionist says crazy shit like this in Texas all the time, and can get away with it. And while it’s true this kind of wingnutty talk will endear him to the Teabirchers, good luck winning the presidency calling America’s favorite social programs criminal conspiracies.